The last couple of weeks have been somewhat unpleasant in our house. Skye had a bit of a virus followed by a bout of teething which has developed into a full blown case of I-Want-My-Mummy. After initially dismissing her uncharacteristically sooky behaviour I began to get concerned that she did in fact have some kind of serious illness I had not been aware of, so I booked an appointment with the doctor. I was actually starting to hope she had an ear infection or the like that would magically vanish once a dose of antibiotics kicked in – hold your Mother of the Year nominations till the end, please.
Really, I was just hoping that there was a specific reason for her sudden change in behaviour. The doctor did all the usual checks and said that she was perfectly healthy, probably just a normal clingy phase like many toddlers experience and there isn’t really anything that can be done. So the good news is that my daughter in in perfect health, and my limited maternal instinct had not abandoned me, the bad news is, Skye is going to be a demanding little punk for the foreseeable future. Just to ensure that she was feeling secure and happy about visiting the doctor and being given a clean bill of health, we decided this would be the ideal time to jab a needle in her arm for her Chicken Pox vaccination. If she wasn’t happy with me beforehand, I certainly wasn’t flavour of the month afterwards.
To my amazement, that afternoon was the happiest and most even tempered she had been all week. It may well be that now I am confident there is no medical reason for her apparent discomfort I am not indulging her demands and emanating stress out of every pore. Either that, or the doctor was kind enough to sneak a dose of Harden Up into her vaccine for me. In any case my approach will certainly have to change as I am not dealing with an ill child (thankfully) but rather a little person learning to express her feelings and needs in the only way her limited language skills will allow – irrationally and a little bit screamy.
Hope this phase passes soon for you! Nothing worse than a clingy, irritable toddler that you can't settle. On another note, had a little giggle at your 'little punk' and 'Harden Up' references, too funny! :-)
ReplyDeleteOh me too Lisa! Glad you liked my terms of endearment :)
ReplyDeleteBtw Erin, I've got a whole chook in the slow cooker cooking nicely as we speak! Got the recipe from you (thank you!) so will let you know how it goes. Smelling rather lovely I might add... mmm can't wait for dinner!! :-)
ReplyDelete@Lisa
ReplyDeleteDare I ask how it went Lisa?